Medieval Theology

• This is 1000 years of intellectual history from the death of Augustine to the beginning of the Reformation
• It is radically theocentric and Trinitatrian
• Medieval Theology is characterised by a theocentric thrust towards the transcendent, which introduces an element of gratuity into Medieval Theology
• All created things have to be seen in reference to God - created things as false Gods will either enslave or bore us
• Only when we relate to God can we relate to created things - you can only have the benefits of a relationship when you are not targeting said benefits
• Medieval Theology operates with a richer notion of human understanding: not just in terms of discursive reasoning or ratio but also in term of intellectus
• Human rationalitry is always fiduciary - it always operates with certain assumptions or presuppositions
• You cannot prove anything with logic without assuming some things in good faith such as the principle of noncontradiction
• Medieval Theology made a distinction between intellect and reason
• Medieval Theology has a richer understanding of ways of reading the Scriptures: literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical (things in the end) 

• Philosophy is a praeparatio evangelicae
• He applies the idea of Plato's forms to the Christian Word
• God bestows his grace upon some and not others, and we cannot give any reason for it
• Think of God in terms of love - it if is true love, it is freely given

Freedom and Morality

• Freedom is in terms of committing oneself to something that you really find worthwhile

Salvation through Christ

• Christ is the sacrament of our salvation

Theology of the Trinity

• The way God reveals himself in the history of salvation discloses somewhat what God is like in himself
• The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (filioque) - by way of Love
• The soul is an image of the Trinity: knowing and loving God

Theory of Knowledge

• Error arises in man's judgements only when appearance is taken as reality
• The truth of mathematical judgements (2+2=4) is immune from doubt
• Cognitions of eternal truths and standards are acts beyond the natural capacity of man's intellect since this faculty is mutable and temporal
  • an illumination from a source that is itself eternal, necessary, and unchanging
    • namely, God

Creation from Nothing

• This opposed the Neoplatonic notion of a world emanting from God through necessity
• This also rejects the Greek view of world formation, which is based upon the model of an artist making a finished product from materials at hand

Time as Extension

• The dependence of creation on God is stressed in his treatment of time
• The past is what was and is not; the future is what will be and is not; and the present is indivisible and extensionless

Eternal Soul

• Augustine's view of the soul is throughly Platonic
• Although the soul is something that came to be, it cannot cease to be
  • The soul is what it is because it sharws in principal, life, which does not admit of a contrary.

Philosophy of History

• In The City of God, he moves from the Christian thinking about the historical significance of the Roman Empire
  
• Rome differs from the Church both as a reality and as an ideal
  • as a reality, Rome is one empire among others, and the fate of the Church need not be bound with it
  • As an ideal, Rome is the earthly city opposed to the ideal of the heavenly city
• The character of a society is determined by the choices of the individuals who make it up
• If the choice is of self-love rather than love of God, then one has the earthly city; if the love is fo God rather than self, then one has the heavenly city

Rahner

• the economic trinity is the same as the immanent trinity
  • the way in which different parts of the trinity engage throughout history reveals something about the way in which God is within himself

Psychological analogy

• there is an analogy drawn between our own understanding of the Trinity and the way the human mind operates
  • the Son springs from the mind of God - this is not a conscious action as such
  • The conscious intellectual form of God is the Holy Spirit
• We imitate God by knowing and loving God
• Augustine draws an analogy between lover, beloved, and loved
  • they are all the same thing but we interact with them in slightly different ways and give them different names

Appropriation

• "God is Good" refers to all 3 parts but only the Son can be called the Word

• argued that temporal categories do not apply to God so he cannot condemn some to hell

The divisions of nature

• that which creates and is not created
  • God as the origin of all things
• that which is created and creates
  • Platonic forms as the causes of all things
• that which is created and does not create
  • the world as we know it
  • angels - humans - animals - plants - sheer matter
• that which is not created and does not create
  • god as the end of all things

• everything that is created is utterly dependant upon God so we cannot think of the world in separation from God
• God is such a mystery that he cannot understand himself and only through creating the world, as a reflection of himself, can he begin to understand

• Theology is faith seeking understanding
• God is that which nothing greater can be thought
• As all of humanity is subject to sin, humankind could not redeem itself but rather needs God
• God is unchangeable so salvation is pro nobis (it changes us, not God)
• God out of mercy bestows His Son so as to restore the relationship between God and humanity
• Justice requires that evil does not previl and is being penalized
• Christ, through his obedience and love, renders "punishment" unnecessary
• For Anselm, satisfaction (which should be understood in terms of penance) rules out punishment

• regarding ethics, only the intention matter; our actual deeds are morally neutral
• he comments on Romans
  • he thinks that it is strange that a God would be pleased to have innocent blood especially that of His son
• Regarding John 15:13
  • our reconciliation with Christ is thaat through his unique grace and the assumed nature, he bound humanity closer to God
• Harmatiology = sin/flaw

Sermons on the Song of Songs

• There are 4 degrees of love:
  • we love ourselves for our sakes (natural self-love)
  • we love God for our own sakes (for our benefit)
  • we love God for God's sake (gratuitous and freely given)
  • we love ourselves for God's sake (utter self-lessness)
• we need to live and love for God's sake so that we do not lead lives of dissatisfaction

Destruction of Sin

• Salvation is a mystery beyond comprehension
• "We cannot probe the divine will but we can experience the effects"
• God didn't demand the blood of his son, rather, he accepted it when it was offered
• criticises Abelard for "attributing the whole of salvation to our commitment...not in the power of the corss, or of His blood, but through our own improvement of life."

• He rejects the notion of knowledge for its own sake
  • knowledge has to serve a purpose of trying to get someone on the road to God and flourishing human life
• Talks about the sacraments
  • baptism = sacrament
  • cleansing water = similitude
  • Christ = the institution
  • Spiritual cleansing through Christ = sanctification
• Faith is somewhere between opinion and certain knowledge. Opinion is tinted by doubt. Certain knowledge can be verified.
• Triangular understanding of love
  • our love for our neighbour is indirect - it is only via God
  • this allows us to love our enemies
  • We should love ourselves because God loves us
    • The good of your soul is God so if you turn your backs on the good of your soul, then you love the other more than you love God

• proposes a social model of the Trinity
• God is love and love entails a movement towards each other
• Love between 2 people can be enclosed and self-destructive so a 3rd element is needed
• The Father = love freely given
• The Son = love freely given and received
• The Holy Spirit = love freely received
• When the Holy Spirit interacts with the world, this is an extension of the bestowal of love in the Trinity itself
• Reason and nature --- creation has order so it only makes sense that God, a necessary being, has order too
• The Mode of Reasoning --- We only see God in His absence in nature
  • when we look at creation, we can infer things about the nature of God
• Cause and Effect --- it is necessary for every being to follow its origin
  • a ray of the sun proceeds from the sun and draws its origins from the sun, and yet the ray is coeval with the sun
    • This can be applied to the Son -- Begotten not made
• 4 Persons in Divine Nature --- There cannot be 4 parts as the perfection of charity is satisfied in 3

• distinguished between things and signs
• Augustine had argued that God should be enjoyed and other things should be used
  • Peter erases the ambiguity by saying that humans are to be used
• The humanity of Christ is there to be used in order to come to the enjoyment of God
  • Through the humanity of Christ we can move towards divinity

The Trinity

• He believed that we are in the image of the Trinity because our three mental faculties (the mind, intellect, and will) mirror the three divine persons
• When he talks of the image of God, he is talking about what the meaning of life is for humans

Eternal processions and historical missions

• Peter accepts that the historical missions reveal the eternal generation of the Word
• Argues that the Holy Spirit is the love of the Father and Son by which they love themselves and us, but also the love which we love God

• his theology is a synthesis of Christian and Greek thought -- Neo-Platonic and Aristotle
• wanted to salvage Aristotle for Christians so wrote commentaries on him
• Aristotle didn't believe in the individual immortality of the soul

• he asks whether we need theology if we have philosophy and natural sciences
• God is the goal of human life and philosophy doesn't suffice for salvation
• everything has a telos and an inclination to perfect itself -- this telos is god
• there are 2 kinds of sciences: core foundations and those which borrow from others
  • theology borrows from articles of faith
• is theology wisdom?
  • difference between the gift from the holy spirit and that attained from knowledge
• knowing that something is bad instinctively
• 4 senses of Scripture
  • literal
  • allegorical
  • anagogical
  • moral
• equivocation --> words acquire an entirely different meaning
  • strawberry jam vs traffic jam
  • when we apply words like goodness and justice to God, we cannot do this as we will not know what we are talking about
• univocal --> terms retain the same meaning this lowers God to human standards

• Father - Son = generation
• Father + Son - Holy Spirit = procession
• The Holy Spirit procession is a spiration which can be active or passive
  • active from the filoque
  • passive to the filoque
• the persons are identical to the relations
• can only define the person from their affiliation to one another
• before God created the world, He already had the world in His mind
  • creation is an extension of the generation of the Word by the Father
• when Christians receive sacraments, they experience the extension of the Gift

• Peter Lombard argued that charity is the same as the Holy Spirit
  • Aquinas says that this takes away the integrity of the human
• we can close the master-slave gap by the Incarnation
  • God became one of us
• God is the middle man by which one can engage with and love another created thing without engaging in idolatry
• Christian love should be agape but this causes the object of your love to disappear; they become unimportant
• we have our own needs so we are going to love those closer to us more so that there is a combination of agape and eros.